Jan Laitos holds the John A. Carver Jr. Chair at the Sturm College of Law. He is a Reporter for the Planning and Environmental Law Review (published by the American Planning Association); a regional board member of the Rocky Mountain Land Use Institute; the Legal Analyst for KUSA 9News; and Trustee of the Rocky Mountain Mineral Law Foundation. He was Vice Chair of the Colorado Water Quality Control Commission. In 1996, he was given the University of Denver’s Distinguished Teaching Award, and in 2005, he was selected a “DU Law Star.” Prior to joining the faculty at the law school, he was the law clerk to the Chief Justice of the Colorado Supreme Court, and an attorney with the Office of Legal Counsel within the U.S. Department of Justice. He has written and had published over 40 law review articles on natural resources, environmental law, and constitutional protection of private property. He is the author of twelve books and treatises, published by West, Foundation Press, Aspen, Oxford University Press, Duke University Press, and Bradford Press.

He has worked as a consultant on several cases decided by the 9th Circuit Court of Federal Appeals, the Montana Supreme Court, the Nevada Supreme Court, the Idaho Supreme Court, and the Colorado Supreme Court, and on several cert. petitions before the United States Supreme Court.

He has lectured at Austral University Law School in Buenos Aires, Argentina, at the European Network For Housing Research Institute in Istanbul, Turkey, and at the Central European University, Budapest, Hungary

Featured Publications

• Law of Property Rights Protection: Limitations on Governmental Powers, Aspen Publishers (2012).
• The Current Status of Cyanide Regulations, 34 Engineering and Mining Journal (February 2012).
• The Growing Acceptance of Nonuse Values in Land Use Planning, Planning and Environmental Law Review, American Planning Association (2011).
• The Right of Nonuse, University of Oregon Journal of Environmental Law (2011).
• Property Rights, Housing and the American Constitution: The Social Benefits of Property Rights Protection, Government Interventions and the European Court on Human Rights’ Hutten-Czapska Decision, co-authored with Professor Ed Ziegler, Indiana International and Comparative Law Review, Vol. 21, No. 25 (2011).